a blade over my head
by Sister Coyote
Summary: As far as Elena could tell, the Turks were incapable of catching a break. Turk-centric, Rufus, Vincent; Elena/Tseng. References to offscreen torture.
1. Chapter 1

As far as Elena could tell, the Turks were incapable of catching a break.

Oh, maybe back before she'd joined and the whole world had fallen apart, and also before the Turks had their funding gutted for SOLDIER, back in the days of the old Turks, back when Vincent Valentine was a Turk and not . . . whatever it was that Vincent Valentine was now—maybe back then, the Turks didn't get their feet kicked out from under them every five minutes.

But now, well.

Good news: Tseng hadn't been killed in the Temple after all.

Bad news: Tseng and Rufus were in the Shinra Building when Diamond Weapon blew its top off.

Good news: Tseng and Rufus were apparently unkillable and had survived that, too.

Bad news: Just months after he'd recovered from his injuries in the fall of Shinra Tower, Rufus grew gray-black weals on his shoulder. Which he didn't tell anyone about for half a year.

And might not have told them about it for even longer if the issue hadn't forced itself.

It was in the middle of a meeting, one of the long depressing meetings where Rufus and Tseng discussed a lot of things that boiled down to the fact that the public hated the very name Shinra, plus the stock market had collapsed and dragged a big chunk of their assets with it, plus three-quarters of everything Shinra had owned or controlled had fallen in, was on fire, or was covered in mako dust or glowing goo. Although, of course, neither Tseng or Rufus put it that way. And Tseng had statistics and charts that showed exactly how fucked they all were.

It was a strategy meeting, which meant that she was supposed to be coming up with ideas, only the only idea she could think of at the moment was 'let's all call it quits, move to Costa del Sol, and drink margaritas until they throw us out of the bar for indecent behavior.'

She happened to look up and meet Reno's eyes, and had the discomfiting feeling that she was probably thinking the same thing he was. Rude, on the other hand, was quietly paying attention.

Great, on top of everything else she'd grown up to be a Turk in the Reno model.

Reno scribbled something on a note and shoved it at her. She twisted it around with her fingertip so she could read it. 'How does it feel to be completely screwed?'

She met his eyes again and shrugged, and smiled crooked in commiseration.

He grinned and took the paper back and wrote something else on it, then spun it to her. She read, 'Oh, that's right, you only wish you were getting screwed.' When she glared at him, he shot a meaningful glance at Tseng and then back at her.

"Did you have an idea, Reno?" Tseng asked drily.

And just as if he actually _had_, Reno didn't sputter or hesitate. He spun his pen in his fingers and said, "We can funnel the resources we do have through the Saucer. That'll help disguise that it's coming from us, when we need to hide it."

She was going to have to learn that trick. If she was going to be a Reno-model Turk, she could at least be a good one.

"That's true," Rufus said. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked tired, which was odd because he always looked cool and composed, scarily so. But now his skin looked grey and fragile. "We do have relatively ample liquid assets in the—" and then he began to cough, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth. At first there was nothing unusual in the cough, just a tickle-in-the-back-of-my-throat kind of noise. Then it went on a bit longer and sounded wetter, and Elena thought, _He's is getting a cold, that's why he looks tired._

And then Rufus _hacked_, doubled over, hacked again, shuddered, and pulled his hand away from his mouth. Instead of blood, a brackish black ooze gleamed green under the office lights. And Rufus was still shaking, now not with coughs but with a long shudder that flung his body back.

Tseng moved fast, so fast Elena thought he must have suspected this, although judging by the look on his face Rufus hadn't _told_ him. Within seconds he had Rufus flat on his back on the table, head turned so that any more ooze wouldn't choke him. "Rude," he said.

Rude pinned Rufus, which was good because the shudders looked to be intensifying into a seizure.

Tseng held his hand out to Elena without looking at her or saying a word, and despite the horror of the moment Elena felt a flash of pride that she knew what he wanted and that he knew she would know. She jerked her wrist to free one of her knives from the arm-sheath, and slapped its hilt into Tseng's hand. He sliced the layers of Rufus' clothing straight down.

Black welts marked Rufus' chest, an archipelago of disease on his fair skin. The same liquid he'd coughed up bubbled in droplets out of the welts, ran together into swamps.

"Stigma," Reno said, and shucked off his jacket. He jumped up on the table, knelt next to Rufus, and used it to mop at the black stuff. Elena took off her own jacket and handed it to him when his soaked through.

Everyone knew that it was better if Geostigma victims didn't marinate in the gunk.

Eventually, Rufus stilled. Rude held him down a moment longer, then let go. Elena glanced at Tseng and saw his face fixed in an expression of great control, although control of what she couldn't read. Then Rufus' eyes opened, watery, blinking a few times before they focused.

"You idiot, sir," Tseng said softly. It was the first time Elena had ever heard him speak that way to the President. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I was trying to decide how I wanted to deal with it," Rufus said. He shoved himself shakily up on one arm, and with the other wiped a smudge of liquid from his face. It left a long, ugly smear on his clean white greatcoat.

The silence stretched until it felt ready to snap. Finally, Tseng said, "And have you decided?"

"I think so," Rufus said.

* * *

It'd been six months since he found the first welt, but since Rufus wore insane layers of clothing he'd kept it from them. Six months. That put him as one of the very earliest victims, according to Elena's research. Hell, they'd all made comments about the Stigma, not knowing that Rufus was sitting there right next to them with stigmata hidden under his layers.

There was no cure, of course, but there were treatments that could forestall the inevitable. Anti-mutagenic injections in case it was mako poisoning, immunosuppressants in case it was an immune disorder, experimental chemical doses that might be able to bind with . . . whatever . . . it was that came out during an attack and flush it away harmlessly.

But the general feeling among the Turks was that they were going to have to find a cure themselves.

"Reno and Rude," Tseng said. "I want you in Cosmo Canyon."

"Crazy hippie canyon?" Reno said, flipping his pen again and raising an eyebrow almost to the level of his goggles.

"Crazy hippies or not, they have a lot of information about the Planet. Elena and I will break back into the old Shinra building and look for information there."

Reno's skeptical look turned to a grin. "Have fun with the roaches, El."

* * *

"Phew," Elena said, kicking a burnt piece of . . . something out of the way. "It's a mess in here."

"I imagine most buildings would be a mess if they were hit by Diamond Weapon. Cover me." Tseng kicked open the door to what had previously been an employee break room. The room was empty: it was pretty easy to tell because the floor had fallen out of it and dropped at least three stories to the rubble below. "I'm more worried about finding squatters."

"Who'd squat in this hellhole?" Elena kicked over a mutated roach and then crushed it. Waste of ammunition to take them out any other way, even if it did mean she'd have to give her boots up for lost after this mission.

"A crazy person," Tseng said. "Unfortunately, Midgar is oversupplied with crazy people. Always has been. This floor's clear, but the elevators won't go any higher."

"I guess we'll have to take the stairs. Door's down this way." Fortunately, Elena knew the Shinra building stairwells very well. Probably they were full of mutant bugs, though. "We should start an export business."

"Export business?"

"Of crazy people. It's not like Midgar's got an oversupply of anything else right now. Besides mako dust and mutant roaches."

"Don't forget the rats. But who would import crazy people?"

"Cosmo Canyon," Elena replied, providing cover as Tseng broke through the stairwell door.

"Ah, excellent point," he said, once they'd dispatched three rats and a . . . something. Best not to look too closely. "The library's on floor sixty-two."

"It's a good thing I've been keeping up my aerobics."

* * *

Fifty-six floors, ten rats, one mako-addled squatter, and countless bugs later, they jimmied open the lock on the sixty-second floor. Which was blissfully empty.

"I guess nobody wanted to break into the library badly enough to pick the lock," Elena said.

"Maybe." Tseng sounded cautious, but then, when didn't he? "Do you want to take the History section, or the Medical section?"

"History." Elena put her flashlight between her teeth so she could keep her gun in one hand and go through the endless books and papers with the other.

* * *

In total, it took twelve hours and three energy bars before she turned anything up. Had she not had training, it would have taken longer, but the Department of Administrative Research actually did have _some_ reason for being called that.

"Tseng!" she called. "Tseng! I found it!"

Tseng appeared around a bookshelf. He had dust in his hair. He still looked gorgeous. Goddamn unfair world. "What?"

"Listen to this," she said. "It's a translated excerpt found in the Forgotten Capital." She began to read. "_In the first days after the Calamity came upon us, we did not recognize her for what she was, nor did we know that she would destroy us if we did not contain her. We welcomed her with joy, seeing in her reflected our own hearts and minds. But she was only a reflection, not a true soul. Embrace a mirror and it will cut you._

"_In the first of the signs that came unto us, we saw that those of us who had first embraced her suffered the Affliction. But we did not see it for what it was, and we did not understand._"

"That sounds like the Stigma, all right," Tseng said. "What else does it say?"

"Nothing here. But there's an endnote . . . ." She flipped further in the monograph, and then read, "_Further research into the details of this mysterious Affliction can be found in _Memetophormic Genetics and the Clone Phenomenon: A Preliminary Study_, by Hojo, pg 34-39._

But luck being what it was (in other words, a total bitch), the monograph was nowhere to be found in the library. Or on the laboratory level. Or in Hojo's private quarters.

"He must have taken it with him when he retired to Costa del Sol," Tseng finally said, with an air of weariness.

He didn't even try to stop Elena when she decided to kick a filing cabinet to death in her frustration.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't as easy as going to Costa del Sol, oh no. Hojo's house there had long since been ransacked by looters.

Rude and Reno took over that end of things, and one thing and another and they'd found a guy who knew a guy who knew something. Elena enjoyed watching them work, and in the end the informant had two broken legs and Reno had the information.

"The looter was some two-bit nobody who didn't know what he had. Word is he was gonna trash the papers, but Tylorn's people found out too soon."

Elena winced. Tylorn's people were bad news, a gang with delusions of grandeur and the balls to try to loot old Shinra weapons tech to get things going. "What the hell use would they have for Jenova research?"

"None, far as I know." Reno kicked the table leg. "He just grabbed everything the looter had found. I think he's looking for weapons research. Our bad luck."

"Last known location," Rude said, "was Junon. But word is he's moving out again soon."

* * *

Elena leaned over the railing of the train bridge, face into the wind. "I bet it was nice back in the day, when Turks could just stop all trains and block all roads until they found the bastard with the papers."

Tseng looked briefly downright wistful. "It was."

She kept her eyes on the train; the vantage, plus Tseng, made it possible to watch all the doors at once. The wind changed direction, blowing her hair into her face; she swiped it back only to have it blow free again. Tseng, of course, had his hair tied neatly back and looked completely unruffled. "That's it, doors closing. Either he's on the next train or Reno and Rude will have to find him at the roadblock."

"Mm," Tseng said. The train began to pull away.

At that minute, a large man fitting the exact description Rude had given them leapt onto the back of the train.

"Fuck!" Elena said, and then, " . . . Fuck!" She put both hands on the bridge rail. "He's not getting away from us _again_."

"Elena—" Tseng began, but Elena had already vaulted herself over and down the ten-foot drop onto the moving top of the railroad car. She hit it on all fours, her PHS spinning out of her grip and off into the bushes somewhere.

As it picked up speed and she scrabbled for purchase against the slippery roof and the increasingly strong wind, she thought, _This may not have been my best idea ever._

It took longer than she would have liked—many long, terrifying moments during wish she was sure she'd fall off at any minute—for Elena to get to the back of the train where she could swing down and in, gun drawn.

Past the startled and increasingly frightened faces of the passengers and up to the next car. She had to knock out the conductor: killing him would raise more questions than they wanted to deal with, but she couldn't have him chasing her while she was chasing the punk who had their papers. And then it was cat-and-mouse time.

In the end, it turned out the best plan was the simplest. Elena moved through the train, asking frightened passengers if they'd seen a very large blond punk with a tattoo on his left bicep, carrying a briefcase. She got enough pointers (people were plenty willing to talk to unassuming blonde women; useful fact) to track him through the train, until she found him in an almost empty passenger car, hiding under the seats. Good thing, too. They were almost at the next station, and if he'd been able to get off, they'd lose him.

When she entered with gun in hand, everyone else cleared out, which made things simple. "You," she said. "On your feet. Slowly."

He got to his feet, slowly, but she didn't like his smile.

"Now just hold out the briefcase—slowly, I said—and we can—"

He complied, all too happily, and in a moment she saw why. There was a flashbomb attached to the briefcase: not big enough to do any serious damage to a person, but plenty to burn up every document in the thing. The train juddered to a halt, and Elena had to stop herself from jumping. It was just the next stop. She kept her hand steady on the gun and her eyes on the punk.

"You can't risk it, can you?" He gave her his ugliest smile. "There's something you want real bad in here, and if I destroy it, you don't get it even if you do kill me."

Elena held the gun on him, steady, and thought fast.

"Face it, Turk-girl, it's a good old fashioned standoff."

"Not quite," said Tseng's familiar smooth voice behind him. The punk's attention flickered for only half a second, but it was half a second too long. At this range, Elena had no trouble putting the bullet straight into his brain.

"Nicely done," Tseng said as he collected the briefcase and wiped blood and brains off it. Elena felt her chest expand with pride though she tried to school her expression. "Although I would say that leaping onto a moving train is generally an ill-advised move."

Elena wiped her sweaty forehead with her forearm. "How did you get on the train?"

"I went back to the helicopter and raced it to the next station."

Elena deflated. "Oh."

"But your method did the job and didn't get you killed. So good work."

"Thank you," she said, and smiled.

* * *

The full translation of the Cetra inscription, from Hojo's notes, read:

_In the first days after the Calamity came upon us, we did not recognize her for what she was, nor did we know that she would destroy us if we did not contain her. We welcomed her with joy, seeing in her reflected our own hearts and minds. But she was only a reflection, not a true soul. Embrace a mirror and it will cut you._

_In the first of the signs that came unto us, we saw that those of us who had first embraced her suffered the Affliction. But we did not see it for what it was, and we did not understand. We saw the Wounds of the Lifestream appearing on our skins and yet we did not comprehend them. We saw the Tears of the Planet erupting from our bodies, and though we withered, we did not know what to do. And the best and strongest of us, our young and our heroes alike, fell before the touch of the taint._

_It is nearly too late; our hour is nearly over. We go now to purge the Calamity from the world, so that we may heal. I pray that we will succeed, and wash the Calamity and all its evils from our Planet._

"So what? We have to destroy Jenova?" Reno chewed on the cap of his pen, making it go 'crack, crack, crack' every other word. "Didn't Strife and his merry band of overachieving hero types already do that?"

"They destroyed the body of Jenova," Rude said. "But there are the cell cultures we took."

"And the head," Tseng added. "In the Northern Crater still, as far as I know."

"Plus," Elena says, "we need to figure out how to destroy it. If we blow it up, we might just scatter Jenova cells all over the place. Strife destroyed the body with, what?"

"The Lifestream, as far as we know," Tseng said.

"So we've got plenty of mako in Midgar, sloshing around making mutant rats," Reno said. "We can use that, maybe? Mako's concentrated Lifestream, right?"

"Perhaps," Tseng said.

And that, in the end, was what sent them to the Northern Crater.


	3. Chapter 3

At first, Elena thought she was hallucinating. It wasn't like hallucinations were exactly unlikely in this situation, what with the torture and all the pain and the sleep deprivation and the way her vision kept blurring out. And what could a vision of a ghost dressed in blood be but a hallucination?

It could, she realized as he gaze swam back into focus and she blinked to clear her eyes, be Vincent Valentine, who moved to her side in phantom silence and knelt to pick the lock of her manacles.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, and was appalled by how rusty her voice was.

"I thought perhaps I might get you out of here," Valentine said, with what Elena thought was totally uncalled-for sarcasm. "Unless you object."

"No, I think that'd be—" She broke off as the manacles came free and blood rushed back into her hands, which stung so badly it brought water to her eyes. "—I think that'd be just fine."

Vincent rubbed briskly at her wrists to get the blood moving. His skin was cold as ice, which might have been creepy otherwise but which just felt really good right now. He helped her to her feet, and then frowned when she couldn't keep from gasping and bending over. "Can you walk?"

"I can probably hobble. They, uh, they burned the hell out of my left leg but I don't think they broke anything." They'd done a whole lot of other things to her, but for some reason the burn on her leg was what stuck out in her mind. Possibly because that was the pain that her body was having the most trouble ignoring. Karma, maybe, because Fire had always been one of her favorite spells . . . .

She was losing her train of thought. Had to focus.

"Lean on me," Valentine said. Easier said than done: she wasn't particularly tall for a woman, and he _was_ tall for a man, so she couldn't so much lean against his shoulder as wedge herself under his armpit. Plus his big stupid red cloak kept getting under her feet. Not that she was worried about damaging it, especially as the edges looked as though someone had gone after them with a pair of scissors anyway, but if she tripped she knew she'd be in bad shape. After a moment, with just a hint of a sigh, he flipped his cloak up over his left arm, then hooked his right arm under hers as she leaned against him, and together they hobbled toward the odd, curved entrance to the room.

"I think Tseng's in the next room. They, uh, they liked to keep us nearby so we could hear each other scream." Right now, she could have happily hollered her head off. The constant klaxon of pain from her burned thigh was loudest, but the cut on her back and the big scrape on her cheek and her throbbing head and a whole slew of (comparatively) smaller pains made themselves known as she moved.

Valentine hesitated. "I'm not sure I can get two of you out," he said softly. "Especially if he's as badly injured as you are."

Elena's back went rigid. "Then why did you pick me?" she rasped. If it was because she was the girl, she'd—it was far more important that Tseng get out, Tseng could report back to Rufus more effectively, and—

"Because you were in the first cell I found."

"It doesn't matter," Elena said, stopping so suddenly that she almost put both herself and Valentine off-balance. Which was a bad idea, she knew, but . . . . "I won't leave without my partner, if he's still alive." Those last four words stuck like glue in her throat, but she made herself say them anyway, because it was possible. "I won't go without him."

Valentine looked at her, and for a horrible minute she thought he was going to pick her up and drag her out. He could have done so, easily, he was much bigger than her and had mutant Hojo monster-man strength, and that was before you considered the fact that she was beat all to hell and back.

"It's a Turk thing," she said. "You remember."

Valentine's weird bloody-colored eyes narrowed a little and his mouth twisted, and it took her a moment to realize that he was amused. "Why do you think I'm here? All right. But I don't know how we're going to get you both out of here before the remnants come back."

"How did you get them out in the first place?"

"I caused a distraction." A half-beat, and then, "Even silver-haired remnant people tend to investigate when they see an eight-foot-tall reality-warping demon creature with horns and wings tampering with their belongings."

Elena crooked a smile despite the pain lancing up and down her body. "I imagine."

Tseng, when they found him, was bound to a table. The wound on his forehead was still huge and raw, bleeding just enough to be worrying, and his shirt had been cut or torn off; usually the chance to see Tseng shirtless would have been a rare treat, but not when his revealed body was marked up with bruises, abrasions, cuts, needlemarks, and damage even she couldn't quite identify.

"Tseng," she said, and he looked up with surprise and a flash of hope that was just goddamn beautiful to see.

"Lean here," Valentine said, propping Elena unceremoniously against the wall. He made quick work of the straps holding Tseng's hands and feet down using a boot-knife, and then gave Tseng an appraising look. "Can you walk?"

"Yes. For some reason they mostly left my legs alone." Tseng's voice had gone as raw as hers, and, well, no surprise. She'd heard him screaming, after all.

Valentine helped Tseng swing his feet off the table and sit up. The wound on Tseng's head bled more. Head wounds were always bad bleeders. Valentine frowned and removed the band . . . scarf . . . . thing that he wore around his forehead and bound it tight around Tseng's. Tseng stood, and then closed his eyes and went even whiter. Head injury, Elena thought. Head injuries were bad.

"If I use magic, it will draw the remnants right back to us," Valentine said, with a note of apology in his voice. "I have one potion, and two of you to move, and neither of you can move quickly on your own."

Elena could see Tseng trying to think, trying to plan something out, but he was sweating with shock and had a head injury. And she couldn't think of anything either, with the drug they'd given her still swimming in her veins, with the burn on her leg screaming pain into her whole body, with her ears ringing, with the long line they'd cut parallel to her spine threatening to break free and bleed again . . . .

"No other choice," Valentine finally said. "Tseng, you will take the potion so that you regain your balance, and then lean on me. Elena, I'll have to carry you on my back."

"Why _me_?" Elena asked reflexively, thinking of damsels in distress and also of the indignity of hanging onto Valentine's back like a frog.

"Because by my estimate you're six inches shorter and probably about seventy-five pounds lighter than Tseng," Valentine said drily.

"Oh. Right."

* * *

A single potion (Valentine explained as he arranged them that he'd had no time to return home and restock before going to find them) wasn't enough to make a dent in most of Tseng's injuries, but it did restore him enough that he could sling an arm around Valentine's back and lean heavily for balance. And it was just as bizarre as Elena had expected to ride piggyback on the ageless ghost-creature ex-Turk. He'd knelt so she could sling her arms around his neck, her fingers gripping the high collar of his cloak and her knees digging in around his bony hips. The cloak didn't smell as bad as she would have expected a wool cloak worn at all temperatures every day by an eccentric recluse to smell. Maybe he got it dry-cleaned? There was an image, Vincent Valentine stripped down to his all-black clothes, passing a bundle of ragged red to some bemused clerk . . . .

_Focus, Elena_, she thought. _Focus._

Their process out of the old capitol was slow, so slow that Elena expected at any minute for the remnants to find and capture them again, or just kill them outright. If they were lucky, kill them outright. Maybe Valentine could fight hard enough to force them to kill them outright . . . .

_Focus._

They made better time than she would have expected, although they left a trail of blood a mile wide, which would have been concerning if she'd been entirely in her right mind, but though she observed it she couldn't form a thought as to what they could do about it. Unless maybe Valentine turned into his big hairy beast shape, and they both rode him like kids on a pony? A giant fanged murder-pony?

She began to giggle.

"Elena?" Tseng said. He sounded worried. "Stay with us."

"I _am_ with you," she said, and she could hear that her voice was beginning to slur. Why was she so tired? They hadn't gone far, and she wasn't even walking. "How come you still sound so clear? They hurt you bad as me."

"I've already had a potion, remember. You haven't."

"Oh, right," she said, and then giggled again. Her leg hurt, and she could feel blood running down her back. Must've pulled open the scabs on the slice there. But mostly she felt distant and confused, almost like she'd had too much to drink. Her hands were sweating.

"Stay with me," Tseng said again, and he sounded . . . very funny. Concerned, that was it. She was dimly aware that her wandering mind was probably due to . . . what was it called? Shock. But she couldn't focus on it long enough to remember. "Talk to me. Do you remember your first mission?"

"M'tired."

"Elena. I know they hit you on the head. Between that and the blood loss I don't want you falling asleep. Do you remember your first mission?"

"Yeah. W'th Rude. Reno was so mad."

"He was angry because he was laid up in traction."

"He was angrier you found a replacement." She nudged Valentine, clumsily, with one foot. "Your fault."

"I wasn't even part of AVALANCHE at that time," Valentine said. "I was still asleep in a coffin, as you recall."

"At any rate, Reno's sense of his own irreplaceability has always been overestimated. What else do you remember?"

She felt lightheaded and giddy, and also so tired. And she hurt. All over. She wanted nothing more than to sleep. "I remember I opened my mouth and stuck my foot in it," Elena said, wiggling her foot again for emphasis.

"Elena," Valentine said wearily. "Do you want me to drop you?"

"No."

"Then hold still."

"Keep talking," Tseng coaxed. "What about after we ran into AVALANCHE?"

Elena sighed and went on. Some part of her could tell that she wasn't making much sense, was getting things out of order and rambling on, but Tseng seem satisfied as long as she kept talking. So she kept talking.

Until the last thing she was aware of, which was Vincent saying, "I imagine we're far enough away to risk Cure. On both of you." She was only barely aware of being lowered to the ground and a flash of green, and then blissful darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was that she was lying on something soft rather than on hard stone floor. The second thing she noticed was that the pain had decreased from screaming to muttering. Her burned thigh still ached, as did a number of other places where she'd been injured in ways she couldn't even totally remember, and it'd take a while for her arm muscles to forgive her, but it was all bearable. Ignorable.

She opened her eyes to a wooden slat ceiling, crudely made, and sat up. And regretted it. She didn't hurt as badly as she had before, but there was only so much a Restore materia could do. Every movement awakened a litany of complaints from all over her body.

The next thing she realized was that she was wearing a large man's shirt, which was a major improvement from the tatters of her clothing that she'd had when she was rescued. That meant that Valentine must have undressed her, but given that she was bandaged and cleaned of blood and her ears weren't ringing any longer, that seemed a fair tradeoff. Plus there wasn't much to worry about given that as far as she could tell Valentine had no sexual impulses, unless you counted mooning over crazy dead scientist chicks a sex act, which she personally did not.

(While she waited for her clamoring aches to settle down enough to move again, she considered the shirt. Was it one of Valentine's undershirts? Did Valentine _wear_ undershirts under all that black leather and random buckles? Strange thought, The Vampire Gunman At Home.)

Anyway, he was tall and she was short, so the shirt was plenty for modesty. She padded out of the room and into the next room, which appeared to be the only other room. Some kind of cabin, then, verging on shack.

Valentine was poking at the fire. "There isn't any running water here," he said, "but there's a bowl and pitcher in the corner if you want to wash your face, and the outhouse is around back. Would you like coffee?"

"No running water, but you get coffee beans out here?"

"Priorities," Valentine said, with a dry smile, and handed her a mug with a small smile. "I apologize for the clothes. I don't have any pants that would fit you."

"No, I guess not."

"You seem better. You've been asleep for some time."

"How long?" she asked, wrapping her hands around the mug and enjoying the warmth.

"Twelve hours."

"Twelve hours? We have to get to Midgar! We need to report back to—"

"You need to rest, or the remnants will finish what they've done."

"But—"

"It was Tseng's idea." Valentine gave her an entirely blank look. "Go argue with him."

* * *

Tseng stood on the porch that bordered the cabin, sipping a cup of coffee. He was wearing what must have been borrowed pants and a shirt, though, to Elena's disappointment, neither pants nor shirt were made of leather. He was patched up, too, with proper white bandages around his head instead of Vincent's red scarf. And even bruised and bandaged and holding himself carefully, in borrowed clothes that didn't fit quite right, he still looked fantastic.

Great.

Elena tasted her coffee and nearly spat it out: it was the sour, boiled stuff called Corel Coffee except when it was called Total Crap. But it was caffeinated, so Elena persisted through a few swallows. Then she put the mug down on the porch rail and said, "Valentine says you don't think we should go to Midgar."

"Good morning to you, too." Tseng smiled a little. "I'm glad to see you moving around."

"We have to go. The President doesn't know what the remnants want. They'll find him—"

"We'll do him more good if we're not hobbling like ninety-year-old women," Tseng said with infuriating calm reason, setting down his own coffee cup. He'd managed to drink more of the foul brew. "Another day's rest and more time for the healing magic to take hold, and then we can go and actually do something useful, rather than being captured again. Or killed."

"We can't just _wait here_ in Valentine's . . . bizarre little country home."

"We're no use to anyone like this, Elena."

"We can do _something_," she said, agitated, and turned away. "We can—"

"Do you even remember what happened yesterday?" Tseng asked, and there was a frisson of tension in his voice.

"I remember saying a lot of stupid things, if that's what you mean."

"Elena, you nearly _died_ before we got you back here." And for a moment, she could see something hovering behind Tseng's eyes.

"Well, _I_ thought you died, what, at least twice? Once after the Temple and once when Midgar fell in." She had meant it to be light, a joke, to lay to rest the look in his eyes. But it came out harder than she'd meant, accusatory.

"But not through recklessness."

"_Recklessness_?"

"You lied to Valentine about how badly injured you were."

"I lied because I thought he would leave you behind if he knew!" She heard the strain in her own voice, but for once it was almost matched by Tseng's tone. "Turks may not be unnecessarily reckless, but we also don't leave each other behind."

Tseng was holding very still. She could see when he finally breathed, once, twice, as though he was holding something carefully inside his chest. Then he said, "No. That's true." And then, "Elena, I know you don't need protection anymore. I'm not trying to protect you. But you don't need to get yourself killed to prove yourself anymore, either."

"I'm not trying to—" Elena began, and then stopped. Was she?

"Reno still gives you a hard time, but there isn't a one of us who doesn't think of you as a comrade, or an equal. You don't have to keep throwing yourself in danger to prove to us we can handle it. We _know_."

Now it was Elena's turn to hold very still, as her mind turned this thought over and over. Had she gotten so used to trying to prove that she wasn't a delicate girl or a green rookie that she hadn't noticed that no one else thought of her that way? "Really?"

"Yes." A brief moment, and then, very softly, Tseng added, "And it would do my heart good not to keep seeing you risk your life just to prove a point that you don't need to prove."

And then, just like that, it was like a switch had flipped and the energy changed. No longer the prickly static of a fight between them, she felt a pull as strong as gravity, so that she took a step toward him and found that he had done the same, and he stood close enough, now, that she thought she could feel the heat of his body, the solidity of his presence.

His hand settled on her cheek. She wasn't a big person physically; his hand easily cupped the side of her face, the top of his thumb resting against the lower curve of her orbital bone, just beneath her eye. It was a startlingly intimate touch. He could feel her every blink.

"You know how I feel," she said, and then stumbled on with, "about you. I've always talked too much."

"Not so much these days," Tseng said. "You didn't say anything to the remnants."

She made a noise, low, harsh. "Don't pretend you can't read me like a book. You're pretty perceptive and I'm—not subtle."

"I can't, always," Tseng said. He was looking at her with such intensity that she wanted to look away, but she couldn't, because that would be _cowardice_. "You surprise me more frequently than I would have ever guessed. And every time I have to look again at you, and see you in a new light."

"Tseng," she began, and then didn't know what else she wanted to say. His other hand came up, not to her cheek but to the back of her neck, his fingers warm on the nape beneath her hair in a way that chased a shudder through her body.

But she was the one to lean forward and close the distance, and kiss him.

His mouth . . . his mouth was smooth and strong and tasted of Valentine's terrible coffee, and though she had begun the kiss he was the one to deepen it. He licked her lower lip and she gasped, opened to him, and then there was the first tentative touch of her tongue to his that sent heat shuddering straight down all the way to her knees and then back up to kindle a long-burning coal to full flame.

She wound her arms not around his neck but around his chest, gingerly to keep from disturbing the wounds still there but so that she could feel his spine and the long smooth muscles of his back under her hands, and as he tucked his arm down around her waist, his chest and his heartbeat against hers. And maybe he was doing the same, the light touch of his fingertips on her cheekbone, the wrist of his other hand drawing circles on the small of her back.

Which made her abruptly aware, first, that she was wearing nothing but a man's undershirt, and though it came all the way to her knees, that fact was making the embrace quite a bit more . . . . intimate than it would otherwise be. And second, that every muscle she had was stiff and she ached all over.

She pulled back a little, broke the kiss, the heat and taste of his mouth still lingering with her like a physical presence. Without thinking she blurted, "Fuck, I wish we weren't so beat up. I can't just, just _jump_ you when I'm like this."

And for a moment she wanted to cover her face with her hands in embarrassment at the return of the rookie who couldn't keep her mouth shut. But Tseng laughed, warm and affectionate, and kissed her again, though more lightly. A tease. And as she moved to deepen it, he pulled back. "Valentine might object if we commandeered his only bedroom for that."

He tugged at her waist and she leaned forward, her head on his shoulder, and felt him rest his cheek against her temple. He was leaning into her, just a little. They were a pair, she thought: both practically in pieces, and they both had to keep shifting because pretty much any position hurt. Everything hurt.

But she wasn't ready to let go just yet. They could prop up like this for a few minutes, leaning on each other, and it was almost okay.

"Since when? For you, I mean?" she asked. She felt him lift his head to look at her, but she didn't look back, keeping her forehead against his shoulder. "Come on, I don't believe you didn't know I had a thing for you from almost day one."

"It's true I knew you had a crush, at first."

"I think there were people on the _moon_ who knew I had a crush, at first." It was embarrassing, sometimes, to remember how young she'd been, how green, just two years prior. And how much she still was, some days.

Tseng gave her a hint of a smile, and added, "But I didn't like to assume it was anything more than that."

"Hmm," she said. Then: "Answer the question."

"I noticed you were attractive from, as you put it, day one, because you are." Elena was glad her face was hidden in his shoulder because she knew the smile that crossed her face was a big, stupid one. "As for the rest . . . if I had to pinpoint a moment that I realized, it was the time you jumped off that bridge in Junon and landed on the train, although I imagine it had already been developing for some time. Given the . . . intensity of the feeling."

"Really?" She lifted her head then to look at him. "_You_ said that was 'an ill-advised move.'"

"It certainly wasn't the way I would have done it," Tseng said drily, which made her laugh. "But it was the moment that I really knew that you needed no looking after. That you were as competent as any Turk I'd ever known." His thumb traced a circle on the nape of her neck, making her whole body come to attention, making her wish she had a free bed and a working body. "From there," he finished, "it was just a matter of figuring things out. And determining if you still felt the same. By the time we were captured, I knew for certain."

She couldn't help herself: she pulled him down for another kiss. Slower, this time, less urgent but no less electric: the heat between them enough, for just a moment, to allow her to forget how much her whole body hurt, to allow her to forget they still had a mission to do despite aching everywhere. His mouth against her, his hand on the skin of her neck, his chest beneath her palms rising and falling with his breaths, and above and with and through it all the awareness of how far they'd come to get here, and how right it was that they'd arrived.

When they pulled apart again, Elena said, "But we still need to get back to Midgar to keep the President from doing something stupid. And I need some pants. Ideally my suit, but at _least_ some pants."

And Tseng smiled at her and said, "Sounds like an excellent plan."

* * *

If Rufus noticed that Tseng and Elena were standing that little bit closer, he said nothing. He was acting very . . . Rufus, and very pleased with himself. (Leave it to him to throw himself off a building and just assume that his Turks had it covered. Of course, he was right: they had.)

But it wasn't until the rain came down and turned his stigmata to the bright color of Lifestream, and then to nothing at all, that she could really relax.

On his feet, now, unsteady but unwounded, he pushed the bandages away from his eye. No more gray welts crept down his face, no more rot infested his eye. He didn't smile, because he was Rufus, and he was far too controlled for that. But Elena did, because that was the kind of Turk _she_ was.

"Now," Rufus said, "we can begin to go to work."


End file.
